Iraqi national security officials on Saturday said they arrested the top-ranking Islamic State figure in Iraqi Kurdistan.  Azad Shakhi, the so-called emir of the Kurdistan faction of Islamic State, which is also known as IS, ISIS or ISIL, was detained in Kirkuk province alongside six other suspected terrorists, one of whom blew himself up amid the siege on their hideout.  "The detainees were working underground and were found and arrested after a thorough investigation and gathering information," Colonel Salam Abdulkhaliq, spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Security Agency, told VOA's Kurdish Service.  Regional security officials with knowledge of the investigation said the group had been planning to target security figures and government institutions, according to regional news outlets.  "The ISIS network that was arrested had links to the ISIS in Karadag and other parts of the region, they have committed terrorist acts in the past," a senior security source in Kirkuk, who did not want to be named, told VOA.  The source also said other members of the Kirkuk sleeper cell had been detained in recent days, and that "another group of ISIS fighters were killed in an air strike in Rashad district of western Kirkuk last night."  Officials said Shakhi, a resident of the Latif area of Shorjay village in Kirkuk, had previously been listed as an active member of ISIS.  This story originated in VOA's Kurdish Service. 

A groundbreaking peer-reviewed study has provided the most comprehensive evidence to date that COVID-19 vaccines are to blame for skyrocketing excess deaths around the world in recent years. Published in the journal Science, Public Health Policy, [...] The post Peer-Reviewed Autopsy Study Links COVID Vaccines to 73% of Post-Vaxx Deaths, Urges Immediate FDA Recall appeared first on The People's Voice.

The government, 30-40 USDA agents stormed a small chicken farm. They killed the farmer’s chickens and arrested the owner. They threatened her with a 20-year prison sentence. Every agency of government is armed and arrogantly believes they can come on people’s property and abuse them. The irony is the government is upset about foreign chickens, […] The post 40 Armed USDA Agents Storm a Farm & Kill the Foreign Chickens appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Friday night that he has nominated Russell Vought to once again be the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). “He did an excellent job serving in this role in my First Term,” Trump said in a statement. “We cut four Regulations for every new Regulation, and it was a Great Success!” “Russ has spent many years working in Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and is an aggressive cost cutter and deregulator who will help us implement our America First Agenda across all Agencies,” Trump continued. “Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People.” Vought graduated with his bachelors degree from Wheaton College and received his J.D. from the Washington School of Law. Trump said that Vought will help restore “fiscal sanity” to the U.S. and will help usher in a new era of prosperity and ingenuity. Vought thanked Trump for the nomination and said that it was “an honor of a lifetime to get the call again” to serve his country. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE He added that there was “unfinished business” that the administration planned to accomplish for the American people. Thank you @realDonaldTrump! There is unfinished business on behalf of the American people, and it’s an honor of a lifetime to get the call again. https://t.co/iqxO733w63 — Russ Vought (@russvought) November 23, 2024 Trump’s reference to Vought being an “aggressive cost cutter” and helping restore the government to “fiscal sanity” comes after he announced the creation of a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that aims to reduce wasteful government spending. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with leading DOGE, laid out their vision in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday. Musk and Ramaswamy said that the way the government is currently run is “antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision” because it takes the power out of the hands of elected leaders and places it in the hands of bureaucrats. The department was created to “cut the federal government down to size,” they wrote. “The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long.” They said that the Trump transition team has hired them to lead a lean team of “small-government crusaders” who will “pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.” They continued: A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The department will work with legal experts and use “advanced technology” to determine where cuts can be made immediately that they say will “liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.” They said that DOGE will aim to gut $500 billion in annual federal expenditures every year that are “unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.” They also advocated for large scale audits of federal contracts that have gone unexamined, which they argued would yield “significant savings” to taxpayers. Musk and Ramaswamy said that they aim to dissolve the DOGE by July 4, 2026, hoping that they will have fixed many of the country’s spending problems by its 250th birthday.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday night that he has selected Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) to be the next U.S. Secretary of Labor. Chavez-DeRemer, 56, a first-term member of Congress who lost her re-election bid earlier this month, has “worked tirelessly with both Business and Labor to build America’s workforce, and support the hardworking men and women of America,” Trump said in a statement. “I look forward to working with her to create tremendous opportunity for American Workers, to expand Training and Apprenticeships, to grow wages and improve working conditions, to bring back our Manufacturing jobs,” he added. “Together, we will achieve historic cooperation between Business and Labor that will restore the American Dream for Working Families.” Chavez-DeRemer said that working-class Americans would now have a “lifeline” to rely upon inside the administration. “It’s time to bring our economy to new heights and secure a prosperous future for all hardworking Americans,” she said. Thank you for this opportunity, President Trump! Working-class Americans finally have a lifeline with you in the White House. It’s time to bring our economy to new heights and secure a prosperous future for all hardworking Americans. ???? pic.twitter.com/72l2VziTKq — Lori Chavez-DeRemer (@LChavezDeRemer) November 23, 2024 Lori Chavez-DeRemer began working in public service in 2002 when she served on the Happy Valley Parks Committee in Oregon. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE She later won a seat on the Happy Valley City Council and became city council president. By 2010, she was elected the town’s first Latina mayor and was re-elected in 2014. She ran for Congress in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District in 2022 and won, becoming “one of the first Latinas and is the first Republican woman elected to Congress from the state of Oregon,” the Trump transition team said. Chavez-DeRemer is a mother and a small business owner. Her husband is an anesthesiologist, and together they own several medical practices in the region.